Income and Livelihood Issues of Farmers: A Field Study in Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir State

Abstract

The study has been conducted in five districts of Jammu region to discuss the income and livelihood issues of farmers. The overall household income from agriculture has been estimated to be 56034.24 with highest of 97876.02 from Kathua district and lowest of 34491.78 earned by the farmers in the Doda district.It has been found that the large farmers earn only 33.04 per cent of income from agriculture followed by 29.26 per cent, 25.30 per cent and 25.24 per cent by medium, small and marginal farmers, respectively. Livestock contributes highest of 11.03 per cent in case of marginal farmers followed by 10.86 per cent, 8.51 per cent and 5.63 per cent in case of small, medium and large farmers. The per day per capita income from agriculture has been found to be 15.43, 17.77, 26.42 and 36.12 for marginal, small, medium and large farmers, respectively, with an overall average of 20.55. As the poverty line fixed by the government is 22.00 which shows that only medium and large farmers fall above the poverty line whereas marginal and small farmers are below poverty line if they depend exclusively on agricultural income. Service sector has been found the important one as it contributes 34.59 per cent of to the total household income of all the farmers. Therefore the farmers of Jammu region have to develop livelihood strategy for their existence.